Kind of a mixed bag, if you're the type of player that loves to optimise stuff and wants to get a 'perfect' speedy, low turn count playthrough then this game will be up your ally.

A remake of FE3 and as a follow up to Shadow Dragon it seems to have added a bit more colour into the maps, portraits and combat screens, the artist doing the CGs for in between the maps still hates drawing eyes though.

This game keeps a lot of FE11's new features like replacement units if you lose too many and allowing you to change most character's classes, this lets players who know what they're doing get pretty experimental with what type of character builds you can do, along with the forging system being back give advanced players lots of potential to mess with but more casual players can end up just being blinded with options. One big thing missing from FE11 is ballisticians which is very sad cus 10 range weapons are funny.

With that said I'm not a fan of how the difficulty modes work, along with the stat creep of FE11 this game also does stuff like taking away the warp staff in higher difficulties and having lunatic reverse, wherein not only is every enemy stat creeped but they all also move first in combat no matter what.

Much like the original I'm not a fan of having miss-able items which lock you out of the 'true' ending really sucks, however it's easier to not miss any of them but it still points a new player towards wanting to look up a guide which isn't great in my opinion. This also goes against the rest of the mechanics pushing you to go for no resets and pushing through your mistakes.

Adding in a remake of BSFE is also a nice touch and kind of required as trying to play the original in today's world is near impossible.

In terms of story it's mostly the same as FE3 but a lot of the new stuff drags the game down a bit, the new plot points don't really mesh well with the original story and the time scale of the whole orphanage thing makes zero sense. Speaking of new stuff the new maps also aren't great but at least they're only 1-2 turn puzzles, while I didn't enjoy them it's another thing this game gives for puzzle-emblem enjoyers.

Overall it's a decent game but would probably end up replaying FE3 over this in the future if I felt like playing more Marth emblem. If you're a big fan of FE11 it's worth having a look at, try out hard 1 or 2 and if you loved that then the harder modes will be enjoyable too.

I got a bit of whiplash going from Echoes to this, which I guess is to be expected, since, you know, this is an older game. It still holds the same general formula of speedy combat and quick growth, and is still highly addicting, but it misses the mark in a few areas, namely in it's story and character interactions. This is a direct sequel to Shadow Dragon, which itself has a fairly dull plot. Despite how unmemorable the game's story was, it was wrapped up quite succinctly and felt like an appropriate conclusion. New Mystery, as a result, just feels like it retreads the exact same ground. It's especially unfortunate given how strong the story was in Echoes. While I haven't played Gaiden, from what I understand it retains the major story beats in it's transformation to it's remake. New Mystery is a massive step down in creativity and intrigue.

And this leads to what the game's biggest flaw is, at least to me: The characters. One thing which was added to this version of the game was a new main character, Chris, who I can best describe as "a person". Chris is meant to take the mantle of the player's avatar/self-insert, which is fine to an extent, but doesn't work in this case because Chris is completely pre-written without a chance to give the player any sort of choice in how they engage the world of the game. So what exactly is the point of their inclusion? Well, it seems they are put in as a method of fleshing out every other character, because Chris is the only character who has a significant number of support conversations. I think, throughout my playthrough, there were only two couples who had support conversations without Chris. Because Chris has no legitimate personality, all of the dialogue given to these characters feels wooden at best and nonsensical at worst. I did play a fan translation, but I can't imagine it's not been thoroughly revised and made to be as close in tone to the Japanese original as possible. This cast of characters is incredibly bloated, and all are defined by simple, one-dimensional traits rather than any actual development. I can't honestly say I remember anyone's personal stories, though I didn't see all of them to be fair.

And because the cast is so massive, it further cements how my ability to enjoy these older games is quite limited. New Mystery has such a large cast because it was meant to be a game where allies would die permanently. This is a series staple which has been phased into an optional setting in the modern day, and New Mystery is the first game to actually allow for ally revival upon map completion, and it shows. Newer titles have put a lot of effort into establishing their characters as capable of being fully fleshed out. The removal of required permadeath made for a higher need to keep players engaged, and this is done through the fun character interactions you achieve by experimenting with your units and allowing individual relationships to blossom. New Mystery has so little in the way of intriguing character interaction that it hardly assists in allowing the player to grow any sort of attachment to the cast.

It's evident to me that Fire Emblem is just a different breed of game for me. For my money, Fire Emblem's most important qualities are the character interactions and speedy statistical growth. But these earlier titles aren't meant to represent that ideal. Old Fire Emblem is about careful decision-making and optimizing your combat potential, things which I don't actually care about in the context of the series. Neither interpretation is incorrect, there's just a pretty clear divide between the old and new, and the inability to initially capitalize on what a removal of permadeath could do for the franchise only serves to show how wide that divide is. Of course, I have not played any version of any game 4-10 so who knows, maybe I'm just talking out of my ass? 3/6